The Right Stuff (1983) on Netflix
PG19833h 13mAdventureDramaHistory
In 1947, test pilots at Muroc Army Air Field die flying experimental aircraft. Chuck Yeager gets to fly the rocket-powered X-1. Six years later, pilots are chosen as America's first astronauts.
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- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
In the years after World War II, the military pushes flight further, and pilots at Edwards Air Force Base race to fly faster and higher than anyone, especially the Soviets. Chuck Yeager and Scott Crossfield trade speed records, and at the Happy Bottom Riding Club Pancho Barnes sorts the men into prime pilots and pudknockers. Gordon Cooper, Gus Grissom and Deke Slayton, among the pudknockers, hope to prove they belong with the best, while their wives, Trudy Cooper among them, dread becoming widows. When the Soviet launch of Sputnik alarms Washington, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and military leaders call on NASA to catch up. The hunt for the first Americans in space leaves Yeager out for lack of a college degree, and physical and mental tests pick the Mercury Seven.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Right Stuff (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In 1979 independent producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler outbid Universal Pictures for the movie rights to Tom Wolfe's book, paying $350,000. They hired William Goldman to write the screenplay; Goldman wrote in his memoirs that his adaptation focused on the astronauts and entirely ignored Chuck Yeager.
- During the filming of a sequence portraying Chuck Yeager's ejection from an NF-104, stuntman Joseph Svec, a former Green Beret, was killed when he failed to open his parachute, possibly because he was unconscious from smoke.
- Wally Schirra liked the book a lot but never forgave the producers for portraying Gus Grissom as a "bungling sort of coward". In an interview he said the movie was distorted and warped, that all the astronauts hated it, and that they called it "Animal House in Space".
- In December 1982 one reel of cut workprint including portions of John Glenn's flight disappeared from Kaufman's editing facility in San Francisco's Dogpatch neighborhood. It was never found, and was reconstructed using a black-and-white duplicate as a guide and a new workprint reprinted from the original negative.
- The movie grossed only $21.1 million in the United States and Canada, and the failure of the film and Twice Upon a Time caused The Ladd Company to shut down.
- Ed Harris auditioned twice in 1981 for the role of John Glenn. Kaufman originally wanted a troupe of contortionists to portray the press corps but settled on the improvisational comedy troupe Fratelli Bologna, and gave them a locust-like chatter made from motorized Nikon cameras and clicking beetles.
- Yeager was hired as a technical consultant on the film: he took the actors flying, studied the storyboards and special effects, and pointed out the errors.
